Dismantling Kings – Homosexuality

So much ignorance. So much anger and hate directed toward anyone who is not a straight white male. So much fear too, of being marginalised, that their defence is – to marginalise those who are different!

This post is aimed at deconstructing the idea that homosexuals are predisposed to depression and health problems.

More prone to smoking and heavy drinking

The study was done in the US, with nearly 69,000 participants. The National Health Interview Survey has been around for many years, but in 2013 and 2014 it included a question about sexual orientation for the first time.

The researchers conclude that gay, lesbian and bisexual adults “were more likely to report impaired physical and mental health, heavy alcohol consumption, and heavy cigarette use, potentially due to the stressors that (they) experience as a result of interpersonal and structural discrimination.”

The results show that lesbians, compared to heterosexual women, are 91 percent more likely to report poor or fair health. Lesbians are also 51 percent more likely, and bisexual women more than twice as likely, to report multiple chronic conditions, compared to straight women.

Gays, lesbians and bisexuals are more likely to indulge in heavy drinking and smoking. 26 percent of gay men and about 40 percent of bisexual men reported at least moderate psychological distress, compared to about 17 percent of heterosexual men.

In the case of women, about 22 percent of heterosexuals had at least moderate psychological distress, compared to about 28 percent of lesbians and about 46 percent of bisexuals.

Gilbert Gonzales of the Vanderbilt University School of Medicine in Nashville, who worked with this study, thinks so-called “minority stress” may account for health differences between heterosexuals and gay, lesbian and bisexual people. He thinks bisexuals have it worse than the rest because they may not always be accepted by gay, lesbian and transgender communities.

Right off the bat, you know the researchers aren’t exactly unbiased in this matter, since they talk about “structural discrimination” of these minority groups in America, a country where they are constantly praised in the media and by the elites. But leaving that aside, their study does show some interesting results.

A vague assertion of being biased doesn’t break down the point. Homosexuals are often ostracised by their own families, to say nothing of communities at large. Holding hands with your partner can land you in hospital or worse. The savage attack on the Pulse nightclub underscores what some extremists will do, and this attack was not an isolated incident. When you are literally under threat of being killed because of something you didn’t choose, that’s bound to place considerable stress upon a person.

Of course, these little details are ignored.

I can’t say that I’m surprised. There are many possible reasons why the LGB (and likely also T) community is having more psychological problems than heterosexuals. One reason could be that some people do treat them badly on account of them being so strange (there’s a reason why they’re called queers). If they insist on acting act out their weird sexual desires in public, it’s understandable that some will take offense to that.

You might get displays at marches which certainly class as exhibitionism. However, it’s a considerable stretch to treat these displays as representative of homosexuality as a whole, and it’s not those displays that tend to provoke violence toward the LBGT community. It’s instead the years of indoctrination from the conservative religious right that blast homosexuality as a sin. Both Christianity and Islam have elements that foster these angry attitudes.

Some might even go so far as to discriminate against them. A business owner with more traditional values might deny them service—for instance, refuse to be the host of a gay wedding. That could well cause the gay couple to feel distress. (Although I would say that that’s the business owner’s right in a free country.)

But I would argue that there are other factors that affect LGBT people’s mental health more than real life discrimination, which can’t be that common in Western countries. The fact that their situation is often described as a lot more bleak than it is, is something that surely must affect them in a negative way. If they’re constantly being told about how oppressed they are by white, cisgender men, and “the religious right” (but not Muslims, we can’t say that), then of course they’re gonna be worried about their safety and future.

I wonder where he pulls his information from? Not that common, relative to what? There was a 22% rise on reported hate crimes against LGBT individuals in 2015 here in the UK. It continues to be a serious problem in the USA. Whilst the frequency and nature of discrimination in the West may not be as bad as in other parts of the world, this doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist, and it doesn’t mean it’s not relatively common.

But there’s one other factor that I want to bring to this discussion. I’m not a scientist like Gilbert Gonzales, and I’m definitely going to sound like a prejudiced asshole saying this (although it wouldn’t be the first time), but I think there’s something fundamentally wrong with gays, lesbians and bisexuals. Wrong in the sense that they weren’t created as they were supposed to be.

People are, like all animals, supposed to mate with each other, otherwise we wouldn’t still be here. Hence, we’re meant to be heterosexuals. Ergo, gays, lesbians and bisexuals were born with a faulty constitution. And since they’re faulty, it’s no wonder if that reflects on their mental condition.

I’m not saying that there’s necessarily something morally wrong with being gay, just that they’re a small minority of the populace for a reason. It’s not something we should encourage people to be—the results of the study presented above support that case.

Should someone feel pride over being born faulty? Should it be paraded around in the street like it’s something we should celebrate? Should we embrace a condition that impedes our species’ ability to survive? I’m not sure I can agree with that.

In one sense I am astonished that the author isn’t trying to sell the mantra that homosexuality is a choice. However, the prejudice is definitely present. Homosexuality exists in nature – it is found in numerous species. Homophobia is only found in humanity. For all our apparent intellect and development, we could learn a lesson or two from other species on acceptance.

Perhaps, instead of shunning, hating and discriminating against the LBGT community (because that’s really paid off when it comes to ‘helping’ them), we should treat them like human beings who just happen to have a preference that’s different to our own. The species won’t die out because some people aren’t straight.